When to Spend and When to Hold Back in Q4: How Mobile Game CPM and CPI Move From October to January, and a Week-by-Week Holiday UA Calendar
For mobile game UA teams, Q4 contains both the most expensive and the cheapest stretches of the year. In November, ahead of Black Friday, commerce advertisers compete for the same mobile placements and push impression prices up. Between Christmas and New Year, that demand drains out all at once and install costs fall to their seasonal low. The same budget buys a very different number of users depending on which week it is spent.
Start with the scale. According to Adobe, US online spending on Black Friday 2025 reached $11.8 billion, up 9.1% year over year, and Cyber Monday reached $14.25 billion, up 7.1%. Across the five days of Cyber Week, from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, the total was $44.2 billion, and 57.5% of Cyber Monday sales came from mobile. The ad budgets commerce brands spend to capture that money enter the same auctions as game ads. On the other side, Liftoff's 2024 platform data shows CPI on both iOS and Android hitting its year-end low in the week of New Year's Day.
We covered annual CPI baselines in Mobile Game CPI Benchmarks 2026: Why One Average Is Useless and seasonal marketing in general, including event planning, in Seasonal Marketing for Mobile Games: How to Plan, Execute, and Scale Around Key Moments. This post focuses on Q4 alone. Using data available as of October 2026, it lays out how costs and demand move from October through January, offers a week-by-week UA calendar mapped to 2026 dates, explains what ad-monetized games should watch for in this period, and looks at how holiday LiveOps events affect spending.
Why Does Black Friday Advertising Push Up Game UA Costs?
Black Friday advertising costs spill over into games because commerce and game advertisers buy the same mobile inventory in the same auctions, and the elevated period runs for roughly a month, from mid-November to mid-December.
Social feeds, video platforms, and in-app ad networks sell impressions to the highest bidder regardless of the advertiser's industry. Retailers heading into Black Friday bid well above their usual levels for a few days that carry a large share of their annual revenue, and game advertisers bidding as usual win fewer auctions. Buying the same volume then requires a higher CPM, and if creative efficiency (IPM) stays flat, CPI rises by the same proportion.
Public data shows this pattern fairly consistently. When app marketing platform AppTweak compared monthly cost per tap (CPT) for US Apple Ads advertisers in 2025 against each advertiser's own annual average, generic keyword CPT ran +5.9% in October, +8.8% in November, and +8.4% in December, the highest of the year, and fell to -10.3% in January, the lowest. Meta ad CPMs tracked by performance agency GeistM for Q4 2025 rose 11% in both the second half of November and the first half of December, then fell 10% in the second half of December. GeistM's data skews toward commerce verticals and does not state its comparison baseline, so it is safer to read it for direction only.
Period | Overall ad market signal | Game UA signal |
|---|---|---|
October | Apple Ads generic keyword CPT +5.9% vs. annual average (AppTweak, US 2025) | Pre-holiday costs are relatively low (Moloco). Retargeting conversions trend up from early October (Meta) |
First half of November | Meta CPM +3% (GeistM) | Costs start rising |
Second half of November (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday) | Meta CPM +11% (GeistM), Apple Ads generic CPT +8.8% (November) | In the US, game competition and costs peak just before Black Friday (Moloco) |
First half of December | Meta CPM +11% (GeistM), Apple Ads generic CPT +8.4% (December) | CPMs for casual genres such as puzzle surge in early December (Liftoff) |
Second half of December | Meta CPM -10% (GeistM) | Android game CPMs drop sharply from mid-December; simulation CPIs spike in mid-December and then fall (Liftoff) |
Week of New Year's Day | — | CPI hits its low on both iOS and Android (Liftoff) |
Mid-January | Apple Ads generic CPT -10.3% (January) | Puzzle CPMs fall to nearly half their December high, while CPIs start rebounding in early January (Liftoff) |
What matters in this table is the shape more than the exact percentages. Costs start climbing in the second half of November, stay high through the first half of December, and turn down quickly just before Christmas. The most important point for budget planning is that this is not a single expensive day on Black Friday but a plateau of about four weeks.
How Far Do Game Ad Costs Fall Between Christmas and New Year?
Between Christmas and New Year, commerce advertisers pull out and game CPM and CPI fall to their seasonal lows, a window the industry calls "Q5," the gap between Q4 and Q1.
Q5 runs roughly from December 25 to mid-January. Retailers stop advertising once shipping deadlines pass, and many companies cut spending while waiting for new annual budgets to be approved. Players, meanwhile, have more time than at any other point in the year to download and play games, on vacation and often on newly gifted devices. Supply (ad inventory) is abundant while demand (advertisers) shrinks.
Game advertising data puts numbers to this structure. Liftoff's analysis of its own 2024 platform data found that Android game CPMs dropped sharply between mid-December and early January, while iOS moved the same way more gradually. Puzzle CPMs fell to nearly half their December high by mid-January, and CPI was lowest on both platforms in the week of New Year's Day. In an October 2025 guide for game advertisers, Meta said CPA in the Q5 window drops below pre-Cyber 5 levels (Cyber 5 being Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday) and CPM reaches its seasonal low.
The window is short, though. In Liftoff's data, puzzle and simulation CPIs started rising again in early January as advertisers preparing Q1 campaigns returned and competition recovered. Even if CPM stays low through mid-January, install costs may already be rebounding, so treating Q5 as "cheap all January" will throw off your plan. It is more accurate to see the cheapest window as about ten days, from just after Christmas through the first week of the new year, with efficiency gradually returning to normal afterward.
It is also worth stressing that a cheap install is not necessarily a good one. Users acquired over the holidays may churn more after the second week of January, when daily routines return. Before scaling Q5 cohorts, look beyond CPI to D7 and D30 retention and payer conversion. We covered the gap between install cost and the real cost of acquiring a user in Why Your CAC Is Not Your CPI: How Game Studios Should Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost and Set an LTV:CAC Target.
How Much Do Game Downloads and Spending Actually Rise Over the Holidays?
Holiday download growth is clear, but global in-app spending grows less than most people expect, and the spending concentrates in a subset of games with well-designed Christmas events.
Stringing together Sensor Tower's monthly releases gives the following global picture.
Month | Global mobile game consumer spending | MoM | Global game downloads | MoM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
December 2024 | about $6.98 billion | +5.1% | 4.18 billion | +6.4% |
October 2025 | $6.8 billion | +4.5% | 3.78 billion | +2.2% |
November 2025 | $6.68 billion | -2.8% | 3.62 billion | -4.1% |
December 2025 | $6.9 billion | +3.5% | 3.75 billion | +3.7% |
January 2026 | $7.1 billion | +1.4% | 4.2 billion | +5.4% |
These are the figures as published in each monthly report, so in a few places the month-over-month rates (which reflect later revisions) and the absolute values do not line up exactly. The direction is still clear. Spending and downloads both fall in November, recover in December, and do not drop in January. Global spending growth in December 2025 was 3.5%, small relative to the impression that December is a peak sales month. According to Sensor Tower and Circana data, US mobile game spending in December 2025 was flat year over year.
Downloads move more when you narrow the market or the data set. According to Moloco's 2025 seasonality analysis, US game downloads surge in the week of Thanksgiving and Black Friday, then peak between Christmas and New Year at more than 40% above the start of Q4. By Appfigures' estimates, the top 10 most downloaded games combined for 150 million downloads in December 2025, up 12% from November.
Spending follows events. In the same Appfigures estimates, the top 10 grossing games combined were down 3.5% month over month in December 2025, but the number one 4X strategy game, which ran Christmas and New Year events back to back, rose 14.3% to about $136 million. Sensor Tower's analysis of December 2024 found that a game in the same genre recorded its best week ever for in-app purchase revenue on the back of a Christmas event launched December 23. In November 2025, many top-grossing games ran Thanksgiving-themed events. Meta likewise notes that in-app purchase revenue starts picking up as mid-December approaches.
From a UA perspective, this data says two things. First, holiday demand flows not to the market as a whole but to games that have events ready. Increasing year-end volume before your Christmas event schedule is locked means cheaply acquired users arrive with no reason to spend. Second, the fact that January spending does not fall below December (though the January 2026 increase also owed a lot to a major title in Greater China) means users acquired in Q5 have spending opportunities all through January. For how to design an event calendar as a retention mechanism, see LiveOps Strategy: Your Event Calendar Is Your Real Retention System.
How Do Holiday Efficiency Windows Differ by Country?
Holiday efficiency windows differ by country: in the US, costs peak just before Black Friday and efficiency is highest between Christmas and New Year, while in South Korea and Japan costs decline through December or CPI falls over the year-end holidays.
In its seasonality analysis published in October 2025, Moloco summarized country-level trends for gaming apps as follows. ROAS gains are measured against the start of Q4 in each market.
Market | Cost trend | Most efficient window | Peak ROAS (vs. start of Q4) |
|---|---|---|---|
United States | Competition and costs peak just before Black Friday; downloads surge from Thanksgiving week | Christmas to New Year | iOS +32%, Android +15% |
South Korea | Costs decline steadily through December | Christmas and just before Lunar New Year | iOS and Android +25% to +32% |
Japan | CPI dips in the Christmas-to-New Year window | Christmas to New Year (revenue and ROAS rise together) | iOS +36%, Android +60% |
This table makes the case for globally launched games to split their Q4 budget differently by country. While you keep US bids conservative in late November, South Korea and Japan may be relatively less expensive, and in South Korea the efficiency window extends to just before Lunar New Year (February 6 in 2027). The size of Japan's Android ROAS gain also stands out. Meta similarly recommends treating Japan's New Year holiday (Shōgatsu) and Lunar New Year in Greater China as distinct seasons from the Western calendar.
When reading country figures, also check whether a ROAS gain came from lower costs or higher revenue. A market like Japan, where revenue and ROAS rise together, is one where you can add budget; a market where only costs fell calls for validating user quality first. We covered how to set ROAS targets in D7 ROAS Benchmarks: The Targets That Tell You a Campaign Will Pay Back.
The 2026 Q4 UA Calendar: When to Scale Up and When to Pull Back, Week by Week
The basic principle for Q4 2026 UA is to front-load in October, hold your bid caps from late November to mid-December, push volume from Christmas through the first week of the new year, and combine win-back campaigns with early Q1 spending in January.
In 2026, Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, Black Friday on Friday, November 27, Cyber Monday on Monday, November 30, and Christmas on Friday, December 25. Mapping the data above to those dates gives the following.
Period (2026–2027) | Market conditions | UA priorities |
|---|---|---|
October 12 – October 25 | Pre-holiday, costs relatively low. Retargeting conversions start rising | Finish creative testing, start producing holiday creatives, front-load new-user volume |
October 26 – November 15 | Commerce budgets start arriving, costs rise gradually | Hold volume in countries and channels with proven LTV, set bid caps in advance |
November 16 – November 30 (Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday) | US costs peak, Meta CPM rising | Hold off on scaling acquisition, let auctions above your cap go, run in-game Black Friday sales for existing players |
December 1 – December 20 | Cost plateau continues, casual CPMs surge in early December, in-app purchases start rising mid-December | Lock the Christmas event schedule, finish approvals for year-end creatives, carry budget over to post-Christmas |
December 21 – January 3 | Commerce advertisers exit, CPM drops sharply, downloads peak, CPI lowest in New Year's week | The window for your largest Q4 volume. Set campaigns up in advance to avoid holiday approval delays |
January 4 – January 17 | CPM still low but CPI starts rebounding | Pull part of the Q1 budget forward, run win-back campaigns for October–November cohorts |
January 18 onward | Q1 competition recovers | Return to normal operations; Asian titles prepare for Lunar New Year (around February 6) |
A few operational notes. First, if you want to scale right after Christmas, have creatives and campaigns ready by mid-December. Platform reviews and internal approvals slow down over the holidays, and if you start setting up on December 24 you will miss the cheapest three days. Meta also recommends starting Q5 creative work in early December.
Second, the question for late November is not "how much can we save" but "up to what price will we buy." Switching campaigns off entirely during Black Friday week breaks algorithm learning and adds a restart cost after Christmas. It is safer to keep a clear bid cap or target CPI in place and let auctions you cannot win at that price pass.
Third, consider moving the timing of January spend earlier. Liftoff recommends shifting part of the Q1 budget into early January to capture cheaper installs and impressions, and notes that teams waiting until late January or February to ramp UA miss one of the year's most cost-effective windows. If your annual budget is approved after mid-January, deferring part of the Q4 budget to the last week of December achieves the same effect.
What Does Q4 Mean for Ad-Monetized Games?
For ad-monetized games, Q4 is a period of rising ad revenue, but for the same reason it is also a period in which the ROAS of cohorts acquired at this time looks better than it really is.
Ad prices directly reflect advertiser demand, so the commerce demand that pushes UA costs up comes back to publishers as higher eCPM. According to Meta's guidance, in-app ad revenue starts rising in early November, peaks around Black Friday, and gets another lift between December 25 and January 1. How much, and how unevenly, Q4 eCPM rises by format and region is covered with figures in the Q4 section of What Are 1,000 Ad Impressions Worth? 2026 Mobile Game eCPM Benchmarks by Format, Region, and OS, and the Q4 Price Window.
From a UA perspective, cohort interpretation matters more. Users acquired in November watch ads during their first week at prices among the highest of the year. As a result, the ad-revenue-based D7 ROAS of a November cohort comes out higher than that of a September or January cohort even when user quality is identical. Scaling budget in late November on the strength of that number means expanding in the most expensive period, and once eCPM drops in January, the same cohort's revenue from D30 onward comes in below forecast. Conversely, Q5 cohorts are cheap to acquire but watch ads at the lower eCPM of mid-January onward, so judging their ROAS on ad revenue alone tends to undervalue them.
In practice, we recommend two things. First, separate eCPM changes out of Q4 cohorts' ad-revenue ROAS. Tracking impressions (ads watched per user) and eCPM separately tells you whether user behavior improved or prices were simply higher. Second, if you run a hybrid game that funds UA with ad revenue, factor in that ad revenue and UA costs rise together in November, so margins do not widen as much as you might expect. The margin actually opens widest in the few days just after Christmas, when UA costs have already fallen but ad prices are still at year-end levels.
Holiday UA Bought by Installs and In-Game Actions: The Playio Perspective
In Q4, when auction prices swing widely, channels that buy installs or in-game actions rather than impressions help stabilize cost forecasts, and they are especially useful in the Android-heavy Q5 window and in January win-back campaigns.
Impressions bought on CPM become more expensive per install as prices rise in Black Friday week. When you pay for installs or for the completion of specific in-game actions, the unit you pay for is the outcome, so seasonal swings in the auction market are not passed directly through to your costs. That makes such channels a floor for volume during late November, when you are keeping CPM bids conservative.
Playio is an Android-based gamer community of 5 million players that uses AI to analyze genre preferences, play history, and in-game behavior to match games with players whose tastes fit. Pricing is CPI by default, and CPE based on in-game actions such as reaching a playtime goal or a specific level is also supported. Just as Liftoff suggests considering a heavier Android weighting in Q5, the year-end holidays are a period when Android user acquisition becomes more efficient, and finding players by genre taste in a space where engaged gamers are exploring new titles over their break fits that window well. In January, alongside campaigns for players who have not yet installed your game, you can also design campaigns that offer in-game action-based rewards to players who already have it, encouraging October and November cohorts to come back.
You can find more details here. (https://playioadsen.oopy.io/bizdeck)
Key Takeaways
Taken together, the public data available as of October 2026 shows that holiday advertising costs for mobile games form a plateau of about four weeks, from mid-November to mid-December, rather than a single spike on Black Friday. Commerce demand is large enough that US Cyber Week online spending reached $44.2 billion in 2025, and those ad budgets enter the same auctions as games. Right after Christmas, commerce advertisers exit, game CPMs fall sharply, and CPI bottoms out in the first week of the new year, but CPI starts rebounding in early January, so the cheapest window lasts only about ten days. On the demand side, downloads peak between Christmas and New Year while global in-app spending rose only 3.5% in December, with spending concentrated in games that had Christmas and New Year events ready. Efficiency windows differ by country: ROAS peaks between Christmas and New Year in the US, around Christmas and just before Lunar New Year in South Korea, and over the year-end holidays in Japan. Ad-monetized games should enjoy the Q4 lift in ad revenue while accounting for the fact that November cohorts' ROAS looks inflated by eCPM. Front-load in October, hold your caps in late November, push volume from Christmas through the first week of the new year, and combine win-back campaigns with early Q1 spending in January: that is the baseline operating plan for this Q4.
For inquiries about Playio's advertising solutions, reach out at: [email protected]
Sources
Adobe, Cyber Monday Hits Record $14.25 Billion in Online Spending, 2025-12-02 (US online spending: Cyber Monday $14.25B +7.1%, Black Friday $11.8B +9.1%, Cyber Week $44.2B +7.7%, Cyber Monday mobile share 57.5%): https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/12/adobe-cyber-monday-hits-record
AppTweak, Apple Ads benchmarks 2026, 2026-08-19 (US Apple Ads advertisers, monthly CPT in 2025 vs. each advertiser's annual average, volume-weighted; generic keywords October +5.9%, November +8.8%, December +8.4%, January -10.3%; no monthly breakdown for games): https://www.apptweak.com/en/aso-blog/apple-ads-benchmarks
GeistM, Q4 2025 Digital Ad Rate Trends, 2026-01-13 (Meta CPM by half-month: early November +3%, late November +11%, early December +11%, late December -10%; commerce-heavy sample, baseline and sample size not disclosed): https://geistm.com/blog/meta-rate-trends-q4-2025/
Liftoff, Q5 Opportunities Mobile Game Marketers Can't Afford to Miss, 2025-11-20 (Accelerate platform data for 2024: Android game CPMs drop sharply mid-December to early January, puzzle CPMs near half their December high by mid-January, lowest CPI on both platforms in New Year's week, puzzle and simulation CPIs rebound in early January; recommends pulling Q1 budget into early January and leaning into Android in Q5): https://liftoff.ai/?p=35325
PPC Land, Meta unveils Q5 marketing strategy for mobile game developers, 2025-10-14 (Meta guidance for game advertisers: Q5 CPA below pre-Cyber 5 levels and CPM at seasonal low; in-app ad revenue rises in early November, peaks around Black Friday, lifts again December 25 to January 1; IAP revenue picks up mid-December; retargeting conversions trend up from early October; start creative work in early December; Shōgatsu and Lunar New Year as separate seasons): https://ppc.land/meta-unveils-q5-marketing-strategy-for-mobile-game-developers/
Moloco, Unwrapping Seasonal Strategies: Where the Growth Lives Across Q4 and Q5, 2025-10-23 (gaming apps: US costs peak before Black Friday, downloads up more than 40% vs. start of Q4, Christmas-to-New Year ROAS iOS +32% and Android +15%; South Korea costs decline through December, peak ROAS +25% to +32%; Japan CPI dips over the year-end holidays, ROAS iOS +36% and Android +60%; data period not disclosed): https://www.moloco.com/blog/unwrapping-seasonal-strategies
Sensor Tower, Top 10 Worldwide Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in December 2024, 2025-01 (spending about $6.98B +5.1%, downloads 4.18B +6.4%, top-grossing game's December 23 Christmas event drove its best IAP week): https://sensortower.com/blog/top-10-worldwide-mobile-games-by-revenue-and-downloads-in-december-2024
Sensor Tower, Top 10 Worldwide Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in October 2025, 2025-11 (spending $6.8B +4.5%, downloads 3.78B +2.2%): https://sensortower.com/blog/top-10-worldwide-mobile-games-by-revenue-and-downloads-in-october-2025
Webull/Zhitong Finance, Sensor Tower: Global players' spending on mobile games reached US$6.68 billion in November, 2025-12-10 (spending $6.68B -2.8%, downloads 3.62B -4.1%, many Thanksgiving-themed events): https://www.webull.com/news/14000313052283904
Sensor Tower, Top 10 Worldwide Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in December 2025, 2026-01 (spending $6.9B +3.5%, downloads 3.75B +3.7%, Christmas and New Year events at top titles): https://sensortower.com/blog/top-10-worldwide-mobile-games-by-revenue-and-downloads-in-december-2025
Sensor Tower, Top 10 Worldwide Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in January 2026, 2026-02 (spending $7.1B +1.4%, downloads 4.2B +5.4%; absolute values differ from December's release, likely due to revisions): https://sensortower.com/blog/top-10-worldwide-mobile-games-by-revenue-and-downloads-in-january-2026
Mobilegamer.biz, Data digest: US and 2025 market stats, December's top games, 2026-01-28 (Sensor Tower and Circana: US December game spending flat YoY; Appfigures estimates: December's top-grossing game $136M +14.3%, top 10 grossing combined -3.5%, top 10 downloads combined 150M +12%): https://mobilegamer.biz/data-digest-us-and-2025-market-stats-ceo-optimism-decembers-top-games-more/
Appfigures, Games Unwrapped More Downloads, Fewer Dollars in December (original, December 2025): https://app.appfigures.com/resources/insights/highest-earning-and-most-downloaded-mobile-games-december-2025